Strangely, the only things we’ve ever reviewed from Charbonnel et Walker are boxes of truffles. It’s what they’re most known for and they don’t seem to like to stray too far into the world of “new” and “exciting”.
I recently found this box on my dining table the other day. I’ve no idea where they came from – presumably one of the umpteen goody bags I’ve picked up pre Chocolate Week… did I mention how hard a Chocablogger’s life is? Anyway, as we’ve not talked much about Charbonnel lately, and this is a week for celebrating British chocolate, I thought I’d give them a go.
Looking at the Charbonnel web site, these are new for Chocolate Week, which is presumably how they ended up on my dining table. They’re described as “a delicious handmade creation of white chocolate, butter, and natural vanilla extracts”.
The Charbonnel site mentions butter several times, but thankfully, the ingredients on my box just mention cocoa butter. Unfortunately, they also mention a few other things like sodium phosphates, vitamin D, vodka and glucose syrup.
Your average fresh truffle would be made simply of cream and chocolate, but all that added stuff helps give these a longer shelf life – at least 5 months in this case. Unfortunately, with chocolates designed to last that long, you lose any sense of freshness. Why would you want to keep a box of chocolates for 5 months anyway?
The result is a truffle that tastes as though it could already have been on the shelf for that long. It’s not horrible, just very, very bland. The centres are thick and firm rather than light and creamy, and the white chocolate is average at best.
You can buy these online from Charbonnel’s web site, or in their Mayfair store, but I can’t recommend them. If you want to try something, go for the pink champagne truffles instead. They’re much nicer and have strong enough flavours that they can overcome some of that blandness, but I’m not convinced they’re worth £11.50 for 9 small long-life chocolates, even with the best of their range.
Click to Enlarge StashUpdate: This competition is now closed.
As Chocolate Week draws to an end, we find ourselves with significantly more chocolate than we started with. So we’ve decided to give some of the best of it away to one of our readers.
This amazing chocolate stash includes chocolate from Paul A. Young, Chocolate & Love, Hotel Chocolat, Divine, The Grenada Chocolate Company, Matcha Chocolat, Charbonnel et Walker, Rococo, Thorntons, Cacao Sampaka and The Chocolate Cafe. That’s a fairly impressive stash, I’m sure you’ll agree.
In order to enter the competition, you’ll have to head on over to our Facebook Page and click “Like” any of our posts there between now and noon on Tuesday. We’ll pick a winner at random and get the stash sent to you just as soon as we’ve recovered from the Chocolate Week excesses.
This giveaway’s only open to UK residents, I’m afraid. Much as we’d love to, we just can’t afford to send that much chocolate overseas!
When I posted my preview of this event a couple of weeks ago, I was just a little excited by the prospect, and I’m pleased to say the event more than lived up to my expectations.
The brand new Longitude 0°8′ at Le Méridien was filled with chocolate lovers and cocktail lovers, and I don’t think any of them were disappointed. It was great to see so many people there, and chocolatiers Paul A. Young and Marc Demarquette even came down to try the cocktails that had been paired with their chocolates.
I’m not going to go into too much detail, as I’ve already written about it once – and frankly after six cocktails, I can’t remember some of it. But it was a fabulous evening, with just the right balance of drinks, chocolate & talking. Everything seemed to go smoothly thanks to the excellent planning Jennifer and the team at Le Méridien put in, and everyone left very happy. With goody bags.
This was probably my favourite event of Chocolate Week so far, but the big finale of the week, Chocolate Unwrapped, is taking place this weekend at Vinopolis. That promises to be even better than last year. Don’t miss it!
Photo Gallery
Time for another of Josef Zotter’s offshoot ‘Mitzi Blue‘ products (I was going to say ‘bars’ but that would be wrong – this is a disc). This time we have the slightly scary sounding ‘Sternenmilch’ (UK consumers have the friendlier sounding ‘Starmilk’), a full flavoured ‘dark milk chocolate’ which is made using Nicaraguan beans, and organic raw cane sugar.
In keeping with the Zotter philosophy the majority of the ingredients are either organic, fairly traded or both.
This chocolate has quite a fruity, berry aroma, with undercurrents of cream and milk. On the tongue the Austrian full cream milk powder comes through more, blending well with the cocoa to create a surprisingly light taste. It doesn’t have the ‘zing’ or complexity of, say, Hotel Chocolat’s 42% milk bar, but it definitely packs more punch than your average milk chocolate. I had expected stronger cocoa flavours from the outset, but they tend to come through at the finish. Once the chocolate has melted away you’re left with lingering notes of fruit and spice. It’s surprising that this is still a milk chocolate when other manufacturers can put out ‘dark’ chocolate with percentages below 40% (Cadbury for example), and that just makes me wonder what sort of tomfoolery goes on to make that sort of ‘dark’ chocolate.
Happily, Zotter chocolates are available in the UK. They’re not cheap, but you’re unlikely to taste anything quite like Zotter chocolate anywhere else, so if you’re serious about your chocolate I would heartily recommend getting your hands on some of this. My two Mitzi Blue experiences have definitely left me wanting more, and I intend to find more as soon as I can.
